The development Research and Projects Centre (dRPC) set out to investigate a much
touted assumption in the child, early, and forced marriage community: that acquiring
vocational skills offers girls a pathway to empowerment, agency, and poverty
alleviation. The dRPC also set out to test the assumption that empowerment and
agency contribute to building girls’ resilience and resistance to child, early, and
forced marriage.

The study maps out and compares therapeutic approaches employed by mental providers to support girls and young women survivors of psychological trauma from the Northwest and Northeast Nigeria. The study employs a content analysis methodology of support initiatives in the Northwest and Northeast to identify the extent to which empowerment components are incorporated into the approaches, pedagogy and the gender of facilitators.

The development Research and Projects Center (dRPC) has an established
record as the leading non-profit in Nigeria's basic education space. With over
20 years of development programming experience in the education sector and
having managed approximately 12 donors funded education interventions.
The dRPC's education projects are a core component of its 2018 to 2023, 5-
year Strategic Plan. With multi-year support from the MacArthur Foundation
coming to and with Covid-19 adjustments to funding priorities the dRPC's
education project portfolio was threatened by inadequate funding in 2020.